


Old

by tornyourdress



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tornyourdress/pseuds/tornyourdress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mandy's older now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keenquing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keenquing/gifts).



The first time Mandy kissed him, it was bitter. Funny how kisses mean something when you want them to. She can't keep track of how many men, women, androgynous creatures in glitter, she kissed in those days, but she remembers the kiss with Curt in excruciating detail. _I hate you,_ it said. _I hate you for taking him away from me. I hate you for being brilliant. I hate you for loving him as much as I do._ All jumbled in together. His hand was at the back of her neck and both of them were wearing what would today seem like a crazy amount of makeup. How did they have the time, the energy, to transform themselves like that, she wonders now. She feels old. She is old, she supposes. She can't be that beautiful daring wild thing anymore. Life caught up with her, and now all she has left of that time are records and newspaper clippings she can't bear to look at.

And that kiss, that one kiss she remembers.

*

She remembers the early kisses with Brian too, of course, the very early days before it was all about _everyone's bisexual_ and Maxwell Demon and sitting there looking elegant pretending it was all okay that her husband was kissing Curt Wild right in front of her, of everyone. There it was in the newspaper, proof that she was all okay with it. She was a modern twentieth-century girl freed from all those foolish antiquated notions of monogamy and straightness and boring old married couples. Look how free and easy they were, the Slades! Just look at them!

Except at times, when she woke up in the mornings, or when she noticed a glance or gesture that she was supposed to be fine with, or when her beautiful husband walked out the door, then she wanted what her parents had. Dependability and Sunday dinners and mundane domesticity.

Then she'd shudder at the very thought of it, and slip back into reality. At least, reality as it was for all of them.

*

The first time she saw him naked, on stage, she was just amused. Intrigued, maybe, in a vague sort of way, mixed in with sympathy for Brian. Poor man, her husband, her lover, trying to be a star when it wasn't entirely clear yet what would do it, what the audiences wanted. Difficult to predict, always, how to go about it. How to be different and original and daring in a way that audiences would appreciate. Not necessarily understand, but appreciate in some way, be intrigued by in the same way she was intrigued by Curt Wild.

She saw other sides of him, as time went by. More of his naked body, lying next to her husband's. Other ways of being naked, too. Naked anguish. Naked hurt. Naked longing. And none of it meant for her.

She watched. She did a lot of that, in those days. She watched the men dress up and perform, and then like a silly simpering girlish fan, she copied them. The whole thing with Brian, with Curt, with everything, was like a death. It changed her. It made her grow up.

Now she can't understand how she was ever that naïve, that enthusiastic, that goddamn young. She feels like she's been old forever.

*

She hadn't expected that Brian would be the one to slip from her life, and that Curt would be the one to stay. He turned up at her flat one night, too late for anyone to see him arrive, and she let him in. She offered him tea, how _terribly_ British of her, and they talked. In quotes at first, clever allusions that covered up everything they wanted to say to one another.

It took them a while to get used to saying what they really meant. About Brian, at first. _I miss him. I know._ Kisses were easier. _I forgive you. There was nothing either of us could have done._

She dropped the accent. She still slips into it every now and again, but rarely around him.

Once she said out loud, _I wonder if he ever misses us._

He looked at her. Didn't answer. Took her hand in his, traced a pattern on it with his fingers. She didn't kiss him, then. Just looked right back at him.

She thought they'd sleep together, then, but she went to bed alone that night. Not that unusual, but it still hurt. She made sure to channel her old self, her young daring self, the next time he came over.

*

She wonders, sometimes, what she wants from him. He still visits her every so often, sometimes for a kiss, sometimes for more. She used to think it was about keeping themselves feeling young, still a part of that world, of stardom and glitz and the curious politics of fame, but at some point she saw that what they did, the sitting and talking about the past, was guaranteed to make them feel old. To recognise that their time had passed.

Do regular people feel like this, burned out by forty, or is it just those who once spent all of their time in a world where everything moves so quickly that you can live a lifetime in a year?

He doesn't make her feel young, or particularly desirable, really. There's a part of her that knows whatever it is between them couldn't possibly exist without this matching void in their lives. Brian Slade, that great elephant in the room.

Is it that she loves him? But she's not quite sure if she's able to love anyone anymore. Maybe that's just what happens when you get older. The intensity and the magic fades away and you stop believing that love even exists.

Or maybe it's just the world they live in. It's not the kind of world you can love in, anymore.

*

It comes to her one day, one visit, when he's turned up and they've slept together and he's fallen asleep next to her. There he is, on the side of the bed that's usually empty, and she's lighting up her umpteenth cigarette of the night, and he's there.

He's there. It's real. It was all real, that time. It did once exist. It was not some beautiful dream that gave way to reality. Once there was a time when anything was possible, when Brian and Curt and maybe even she could have changed the world.

It's better than nothing, she thinks, as she stubs out her cigarette and edges closer to the man in her bed.


End file.
